Thursday, March 13, 2003

From the roof
of the academic building at Conrad Grebel University College, it's
clear that the $5 million
expansion
project is coming along. New residence
space is under construction along with an atrium to link the college's
two existing buildings.

Engineers to show off 3-D theatre

Architects, town planners, mechanical engineers and computer scientists
who share an interest in computer-aided design will show off one of their
flashiest tools tomorrow at an open house for the new
Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing (ICVDM).

A release from the UW
media relations office explains that
the interdisciplinary research centre will hold its open house tomorrow
from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. "at one of its facilities for moving between the
physical and virtual world -- the Immersive Design Theatre. The
theatre, in Davis Centre room 1702, has an eight-by-ten-foot stereo
display wall that immerses visitors in three-dimensional space.
Applications will be demonstrated, ranging from urban design with a
virtual model of downtown Waterloo, through virtual machining, to a
navigation psychology experiment."

Architects and planners are involved in the project because they need to
visualize the urban and interior environments they create for the future.
The computer can make their work easier and more reliable, allowing them
to cope with vast quantities
of data and visualize the consequences of different options interactively.

Mechanical engineers are interested because they want to use computer
graphics and simulation to provide an accurate, three-dimensional model
of what happens when a machine alters the shape of a metal sheet or bar.
This data can be used to optimize control of the machines that do the
shaping (manufacturing). Computer scientists are involved because they
bring everything together, in part by developing the new computer
graphics and simulation techniques both architect/planners and engineers
need to achieve their objectives.

The founder and director of the centre, architecture professor Thomas Seebohm,
is a specialist in using computers for architectural designing.

The new ICVDM was described in the Daily Bulletin
last
month, and was the topic of a double-page feature in last week's
Gazette.

London music trip fits student budget --
by Barbara Elve, from the Gazette

Many travel courses offer an experience geared to the gainfully employed
or the newly retired. Conrad Grebel music professor Ken Hull hopes to
change that this spring with a new course:
Music and Culture
in London, from May 22 to June 5.

"I wanted to do something that costs a little less, that students can
do," he says. Hull, a music historian who has focused much of his
research on the 19th century, studied in Cambridge and London.

Of European cultural capitals, "I know London best, and the concert life
is as good as any." As well, he adds, "there are other cultural events
tie into," an advantage he hopes will appeal to non-music majors he
hopes to attract.

To reflect a range of interests and to place music within a historical context,
the trip will take students on a tour of the music and cultural life of
London from the 16th century to the present with an itinerary that
includes concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and other London
locations; operas at the Coliseum and Covent Garden;
choral worship at St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and King's
College, Cambridge;
a play at the recently opened functioning replica of Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre;
and tours of the British Museum, Handel House Museum and
other museums and galleries.

Geared to undergraduate students interested in history or the arts (but
open to others), the course, Music 355B, may be taken for interest or
credit. For those pursuing a credit, students will take an exam, keep a
journal of the trip, and write a paper after their return.

Hull hopes the tour will "broaden students' understanding of what music
is and how it functions in an immersion context. For many," he predicts,
3it will be their first time in Europe. For some, it could be a
graduation present to themselves.
To visit the house where Handel lived and wrote Messiah provides a
dimension you can't get any other way. There are all the historical
layers we can tap into."

Inspired by the "overwhelming success" of Wilbur Maust's annual Music
and Culture in Vienna course, Hull hopes to run the London version every
other year.

With the possibility of Britain participating in a war with Iraq, "it's
not impossible that all this could get pre-empted," Hull admits. "But
you can't plan with that in mind. We'll have to assess the situation as
it unfolds.
There are still a few spaces, and anyone interested should contact
Hull as soon as possible at 885-0220 or krhull@uwaterloo.ca.

Engineers
on stage: "Moonchildren" by Michael Weller is this term's Engineering
Society play. It tells the story of seven students who live together for
a year, "exploring the mysteries of life, death, cats, sex, jealousy,
hamburgers, and love".
Performances
are tonight through Saturday at 8, plus Saturday afternoon at 2, in
Environmental Studies II room 286. Tickets: $6. Photo for Imprint
by Kristen Howard, photogene.ca, used by permission.

Events of another winter day

UW's participation in the
30-Hour Famine
will be starting at noon today. Nancy O'Neil writes from the Student
Life Centre:
"This is the first time that the university is hosting the 30 Hour Famine
Fast, a worldwide event that allows people to do
something to fight hunger in our world.
Throughout the 30 hours of fasting various activities will be held in
the SLC and surrounding areas of campus. Opening ceremonies begin at
noon. Jenn Datta from World Vision will be
guest speaker. A Free Tibet Concert will be
held in the multi-purpose room, starting at 8 p.m.
Many areas of campus will be represented at this event.
Students are still looking for people to sponsor them. The University
of Victoria has challenged the UW group."

Spring term job match results for architecture students will be
posted at noon in the Co-op and Career Services building. . . .
Under the rubric "Let's Play", there's a sale on audio equipment (15 per
cent off) all this week at the Techworx outlets in South Campus Hall and
the Student Life Centre. . . .
"Picture Yourself in Paradise" is the suggestion, as the computer store (in
the Math and Computer building) is visited by an expert on HP PhotoSmart
digital cameras from 10:00 to 3:00 today. . . .

A workshop on academic publishing, aimed mostly at graduate students,
starts at 12
noon with a panel of faculty members from four departments. . . .
The Pure Math, Applied Math and Combinatorics and Optimization Club will
hold another set of its "short attention span math seminars" starting
at 3:30 in Math and Computer room 5158. . . .
The Philosophy Graduate Student Association's annual two-day conference
gets under way this morning
in the Humanities
building. . . .

A meeting of
WatCHI, the special-interest
group for Computer-Human Interaction, is scheduled for 5 p.m. in the
Flex Lab in the Dana Porter Library. . . .
The Computer Science Club sponsors a talk about the markup language
XML at 6:30 tonight in Math and Computer room 1085. . . .
The local student branch of the IEEE --
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers -- will hold
"student paper night" starting at 7:00 in Davis Centre room 1304. . . .

One talk that's scheduled for tonight is bit out of the ordinary. Eric
Haldenby of UW's architecture school has the details:

Italian civil/hydrological engineer Maurizio Ferla will speak on the past
present and future of the lagoons of Venice. The relationship between Venice
and its waters is one of the most compelling examples of the
interdependence of cultural and environmental forces. Mr. Ferla is at the
forefront of
environmental research directed at preserving Venice, a city that is
absolutely unique and
sorely threatened.
Mr. Ferla's talk will cover natural history and environmental forces
influencing the Venice Lagoon. He will discuss the effects of modern
construction and the successes and failures of efforts to protect the lagoon
and the city.
Mr. Ferla is Director of the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Office of the
"Magistrato delle Acque" and a director
of the Italian Environmental Protection Agency. For more than a decade he
has been studying the rivers and lagoons in the region of Venice, working
particularly on the forecast of floods, high tide warnings, water quality
and the management of dams and flood control devices.

The talk starts at 7 p.m. in Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's University.
Admission is free.

Talk of a different kind is scheduled for 8 p.m. in the Humanities
Theatre, and admission there is definitely not free. Tickets to see
"spoken word" artistHenry
Rollins(right, photo from Yahoo)
are priced at $27, from the Humanities box office.

The Rainbow Reels"queer
film festival" begins today with a showing at the Princess Cinema in
central Waterloo. Friday night's showing will be at POETS pub in Carl
Pollock Hall, with Saturday and Sunday showings in Davis Centre. I'll say
a bit more about this festival in tomorrow's Daily Bulletin.

And . . . UW president David Johnston will be in New York today
for a reception to meet Waterloo alumni there. Being held at the
Canadian consulate on Sixth Avenue, it's the event that was postponed
because of a snowstorm last month. (Forecast for New York today: snow again,
but not that much.)

The talk of the campus

Well, in Tuesday's Daily Bulletin I talked about "Explorations", an
event in the engineering faculty to introduce young students to what
engineers do, and I said it would be taking place that evening. I've
learned that the information I was given was incorrect, and it was actually
over by that time; it happened on Monday night. "We had somewhere between
1,300 and
1,500 kids and their parents," writes Graeme Baer from the Engineering
Society, "to view the 40-plus displays that were running throughout the
engineering buildings." Wish I'd known sooner.

An article first published in Waterloo's literary magazine,
The New Quarterly, published out of St. Jerome's University,
is among 10 selected for Best Canadian Stories 2002.
Bernice Friesen's story "The Irish Book of Beasts" was published in
TNQ volume 20 no. 4.
The story is actually an excerpt from a novel, but
Best Canadian editor Douglas Glover insisted that it's
"story-like enough for me, not to mention charming, funny and cunning".
It tells the story of the new boy at an Irish Catholic school and his
fall from grace, or at least from the boughs of one of the trees in the
head priest's orchard, trees forbidden to all boys. He has broken a
branch on the way down, and what follows is the search for a
punishment appropriate to the crime.
Best Canadian Stories is published by Oberon Press.

The February issue of Forum, the newsletter of UW's faculty
association, arrived on desks a few days ago, and is largely devoted to
issues of world politics -- terror, America and Iraq. "In my view,"
writes association president Catherine Schryer, "the possibility of the
war in Iraq and the current suppression of civil liberties should deeply
concern all of us. Over the last week, I have sent several e-mails
expressing my personal opposition to the war. But each time I did so, I
really had to think about my decision. I have to travel to the
United States for several conferences during the next few months, and I
wondered about the implications of letting my views be known." She adds that
some of the material about the possible war that's circulating on the
Internet, some of it originating from the
Canadian Association of University
Teachers, has been posted on the UW association's
web site.

The organizers of the
Keystone Campaign
have announced ten winners for this month in their regular donor draw.
Faculty members, staff members and retirees are receiving such prizes as
restaurant gift certificates and travel vouchers. "Thank you to
all Keystone donors," writes Bonnie Oberle from the development office.
"Your donation qualifies you for a chance to win each month. The next
draw will be held the first week in April."

The minutes of UW's pension and benefits committee report that as of
July 1, 2003, the annual cost-of-living increase for UW pensioners
will be 2.23 per cent. In a feature that not many pension plans have, UW's
plan provides automatic annual indexing of pensions, up to 5 per cent, to
keep up with the rising cost of living.